Thursday, July 11, 2013

Alana Goodman, the author of the Washington Free Beacon's hit piece against Rand Paul earlier this week (my thoughts on it here), favorably quoted a radical racist and terrorist leader in a 2008 article for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.

The piece, entitled "Bye George W. Bush, it's been Israel," was a letter of gushing praise for the outgoing Republican president. With the USA's own interests thrown in as an afterthought, Goodman clearly assesses George W. Bush's presidency as a glowing success for one reason:

"In the past 60 years, no U.S. president has been a better friend to Israel. And for a country so desperately in need of friends, his assistance has been invaluable."

Goodman's single most important criterion for the success of a US presidency is... how good it is for a single other country, not for the US. Not for the entire world.

But the strangest part of a very strange article was near the end, where Goodman favorably quotes one Rabbi Meir Kahane:

'The world has negotiated, denounced and condemned for too long. After a while, words lose their meaning unless they are backed up with swift and decisive action.

To borrow a phrase from Rabbi Meir Kahane, “One does not deal with terrorists; one does not bargain with terrorists; one kills terrorists.”

I’m grateful to have a leader who understands this. Bush will be truly missed.'

Get 'em Kahane! I'm grateful to have a leader who understands where Kahane was coming from!

Who's Meir Kahane?

That's what I wanted to know. Turns out, not someone I would ever choose to represent my point of view, especially not when it comes to Israel and Palestine, and especially not after writing an emotionally charged article heavy on calls for swift and decisive action! without ever naming exactly the kind of action I'm calling for.

The Anti-Defamation League says that Meir Kahane "preached a radical form of Jewish nationalism which reflected racism, violence, and political extremism."

On their website, the ADL has a detailed chronology of the acts of violence and terror carried out by Kahane's group from 1969 - 1995.

In 2002, the Southern Poverty Law Center added the Jewish Defense League to its list of watched hate groups for the JDL's "long history of bombing, assaulting and threatening its perceived enemies" such as "the Soviet Union, neo-Nazi activists, Palestinian leaders, prominent black Americans and even Jewish moderates" as well as other Jewish radicals.

Kach, the far-right political party that Kahane founded in Israel in the 1970s was actually banned from elections by the Israeli government for incitement to racism. Kahane's racist legislative proposals included revoking Israeli citizenship for non-Jews and banning marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. To this day, the remnants of Kach are considered terrorist organizations by the governments of Israel, Canada, the European Union, and the US.

Now at this point, I'd have a lot of questions to ask Alana Goodman, but I'll leave it at this: Should you be judged by the same journalistic standards you've used to impugn the character of others?